The Jihadist Threat to New York and the West

Peloni:  See Moshe Jacobs of Shomrim talk with Zev Brenner about this attack in video at the bottom.

Avi Abelow | Meta

Yesterday, a Jewish man was stabbed on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—the neighborhood where I grew up. According to the victim and witnesses, the attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he carried out the assault. Yet almost immediately, discussion turned to the possibility of mental illness.

Perhaps the attacker was mentally ill. But if someone shouting “Christ is King” while stabbing people would prompt immediate questions about ideology, why is there such reluctance to ask whether someone invoking one of Islam’s most well-known religious phrases may have been motivated by jihadist ideology? Authorities are still investigating the motive, but the reflex to dismiss the ideological possibility before the investigation is complete is itself revealing.

This attack did not occur in a vacuum.

It comes amid an atmosphere in which New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has repeatedly accused Israel of genocide and war crimes, rhetoric that many Jews see as helping legitimize hostility toward the Jewish state and, by extension, toward Jews themselves. When elected leaders repeatedly portray Israel as uniquely evil, they should not be surprised if some people come to see Jews as legitimate targets.

As Jews around the world mourn the destruction of both Temples, and our ancient Jewish kingdoms thousands of years ago, it is time they awaken to the process of self-destruction unfolding in every Western country today. The red-green progressive-jihadist alliance to destroy the West and persecute all non-Muslims has only begun. So too has the surge in Jew-hatred and violent attacks against Jews.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has released a video in which he acknowledges that he lacks the legal jurisdiction to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should the Israeli leader visit the city. In the same breath, however, Mamdani publicly brands Netanyahu and the Jewish state of Israel as perpetrators of genocide and war crimes.

This is no minor rhetorical flourish. It is the elected mayor of the largest Jewish populated city in the diaspora outside Israel deliberately trafficking in the oldest and most lethal of libels. Jewish New Yorkers are rightly furious. When the chief executive of their city peddles these falsehoods, he does more than express a foreign-policy preference. He legitimizes hatred, places a target on Jewish backs, and endangers the physical safety of Jewish citizens in the very city that so many Jews helped build.

Mamdani is not an aberration who will fade with the next election cycle. He is a harbinger. Year after year, American cities and states will produce more politicians cut from the same jihadi cloth. Jihadist Islam is advancing through the democratic process itself, with the help of the progressive socialists, leveraging growing demographic voting blocs to capture municipal offices, governorships, and eventually seats in Congress and the Senate. Its adherents have been explicit about this strategy. Those who prefer to look away, fearing the charge of “Islamophobia,” do so at their peril. Fear of Islam is neither irrational nor bigoted; it is grounded in fourteen centuries of doctrine and practice.

The foundational texts of Islam instruct the faithful to emulate Muhammad, whose career was marked by the migration, subjugation, and persecution of non-Muslims. History records the results with grim consistency. Egypt was once a predominantly Christian Coptic land; waves of Muslim migration from Arabia transformed it into a Muslim-majority country while subjecting the remaining Christians to progressive pressure and decline. Turkey, the historic heartland of Eastern Orthodoxy, followed the same trajectory after Muslim conquest and settlement. Lebanon, still a Christian-majority country only fifty years ago, underwent an identical demographic and political conversion. The pattern is neither ancient folklore nor isolated coincidence.

If Britain, France, the United States, and other Western nations continue to refuse the hard choices required, beginning with the identification and deportation of all those who actively promote jihadist ideology, then London, Paris, and New York will increasingly resemble Beirut. The danger is not theoretical. More than half of the classical Islamic corpus is devoted to the rules and justification of warfare and the subordination of non-Muslims. Societies that treat this body of teaching as irrelevant cultural ornament, or explain it away in language of “freedom of religion”, do so at the cost of their own cohesion and security.

Yes, there are Muslims who neither believe in nor practice this jihad; many fled to the West precisely to escape the jihadi culture of their Arab Muslim countries of origin. The most effective way to enable them to continue enjoying the freedoms of the West that they value is to deport those who actively promote and pursue jihad.

The time for polite evasion has ended. Citizens and policymakers must confront the documented doctrines, the historical record, and the contemporary political trajectory without apology. Those seeking a clear-eyed examination of the source material would do well to consult ‘Measuring Mohammad’ by Bill Warren. The evidence is available. The only remaining question is whether we will act on it before the transformation becomes irreversible.

The Jewish people in Israel are waking up to this danger. We still face enormous challenges, especially from within, but we will overcome them.

The real question is: Will the rest of the West wake up in time?

And if you are Jewish, now is the time to begin making your aliyah plans.

Come home.

Because this is your home.

Strengthen your faith.

Am Yisrael Chai!!!